An Indian court has sentenced 21 Hindus to life imprisonment in connection with the deaths of 11 members of a Muslim family during some of the country's worst sectarian violence 10 years ago.

Judge SC Srivastava found the 21 guilty of attempted murder and rioting. The killings took place in 2002 in Visnagar, a town in the state of Gujarat.

More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by Hindu mobs in the state after a train fire killed 60 Hindus who were returning from a pilgrimage. Muslims were blamed for the fire. Tens of thousands of people were left homeless as the rioters set fire to Muslim homes and businesses.

The religious violence was among India's worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.

The verdict on Monday was the second in nine cases of rioting and murder pending against hundreds of Hindu hardliners. In November last year, 31 Hindus were sentenced by the same court to life imprisonment for killing dozens of Muslims by setting a building on fire in the state's Mehsana district. The courts are expected to issue verdicts in the remaining cases within a year as ordered by India's top court.

The state government, run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, was accused of looking the other way when Hindus attacked Muslims after the train fire.